


Two in Hand

by cognomen



Series: Confession Continuum. [1]
Category: Dragon Age 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:07:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for the Dragon Age Kink meme, for Sebastian/Fenris H/C. After the end of the game two stumble off; one has learned to share his burdens, but the other has always insisted to be the only one to take them up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two in Hand

He hasn't felt this pain in years. The low rending, though his body still somewhat recalls, here he is in a rush, wanting the pain. Wanting the memories of nights how long ago, when he'd fucked past pleasure - meaningless, fleeting - and into pained endurance. Oversensitive and growing from a low burn to a sharp sensation that became the only way Sebastian had known he was still alive.

As if by bringing the ghosts of these sensations he can serve the dual purpose of reminding himself he lives and unraveling time itself, to before, so that from this disordered ruin of his life he had some chance of finding meaning. He knows better. His very bones had seemed to bleed out of him when the accursed red light had pushed against his eyes, through those windows and down into a soul the Maker had not prepared for such sudden emptiness.

He had found resolve enough to see revenge done - Maker help his soul - and sort through the most imminent of Kirkwall's problems at Hawke's back. Now it had fled, leaving him reeling, numb, not yet willing to grieve. With Hawke swept along by events and their cause, only Fenris had noticed Sebastian's withdrawal, self-exclusion, and stumbling retreat.

He'd suddenly found himself near-blind with shock, the whole of his senses seeming at once fueled to vibrating tension and cut snappingly slack like a knife run through a strained bowstring.

Sebastian remembers very little of the interconnecting events from there to here, only Fenris' voice and stumbling past the door frame of his abandoned mansion.

"You give so much," Fenris had almost whispered. "Take something back for once."

Perhaps he hadn't meant this, exactly, but the tone of the offer left implicit that he would not deny Sebastian anything he needed. At this exact second - though possibly he would regret later that it could not push time back as well as his mind - he needed to pretend he could climb back up from the bottom again.

That it would be as wondrous and unexpectedly beautiful as it had been before. That he could break this last vow and find Elthina to shake her head at him and forgive him yet again.

Fenris is trying to slow him - without words, with shifting of his position to try and ease the punishing way Sebastian is impaling himself on him, and Sebastian - for this instant selfish - will have none of it. He pushes hard with is palms on Fenris' white-traced shoulders, changes his leverage - he knows far more tricks than the Elf - and finishes the job. He seats himself hard on Fenris' erection and in the momentary white (absolution) obliteration of pain, he's not sure who the surprised growl comes from. The tearing shock of it - not permanent harm, nothing serious, he knows from experience - the white hot completion of the gesture is what he needs.

It gives Sebastian that moment of blank where the burn of intertwined pain and pleasure can sear blazing hot and all-encompassing over everything he'd otherwise perceive. Fenris is hissing breath in through his teeth, muscles locked into stillness while they both hold still -Sebastian aware of little else and clinging to the sensation and Fenris trying to keep from harming him further.

The first thought that creeps back into his awareness is that Fenris would be punishing himself for this, and Sebastian wanted it, without leaving his un-deserving partner guilty for it. Fenris could barely ask for anything (which Sebastian had possibly caused himself a slow surprise in discovering that he would give anything) already. It's the thought of how Fenris always approaches with down-turned eyes, ashamed to ask anything for himself that summons Sebastian back from his wild abandonment of self to the void.

It must only be moments that have passed, but it feels a small area has crept by with them at the apex of joining.

Without moving more than necessary, he lifts one hand from Fenris' shoulder to curl his fingers underneath Fenris' chin, and his own eyes open to meet the green challenge in Fenris' gaze. It's not worry he finds there - or not in the standard definition of such.

Instead there's a quiet, grounding challenge writ in stony features. "Have you lost your mind?" Fenris asks, and Sebastian can't help the way he laughs, even if it's probably no boon to his case against madness.

"Yes," he says, with a gentle shift in position to prevent argument, lowering his hands again to brace against Fenris' stomach - tight, compactly muscled and traced with the same chalky white lines that sprang to life with a light that reminded Sebastian, invariably, of the white light that came late in the day through the high windows in the Chantry.

"Yes I did, he repeats, breaking off with a half-stifled groan as he begins to move again, pace slow but with no pauses. Compromise. "But that was the idea."

The challenging look passes Fenris' features again, but he doesn't look down, and Sebastian watches with some (small, distant, but there all the same) satisfaction as the internal war with an overall projection of uncaring loses out to what Fenris is telling himself is curiosity.

"Does it work?" he asks, but he has to gather his words around the haze of distraction because Sebastian won't give him any pause to put them together. He's moving too now - with the archer giving no sign of pain, his instincts come back.

"No," Sebastian admits, "Not always. This time? Yes. Briefly."

"I..." Fenris begins to confess something, but bites it off in embarrassment, and covers with a pleasured sound. Struck with a sudden moment of charity, Sebastian slows his pace to let Fenris continue.

It's nearly impossible to miss the sharp, displeased look Sebastian gives him, but usually his admittances were delivered with some weigh - a heavy thing like he'd bodily dragged them place to place, and Sebastian would gladly take up the weight. At this exact moment, it was better to think about than his own problems.

"I sometimes remember," Fenris continues, straying his gaze and long fingers over Sebastian's thigh while they surge together. "Hawke and I-"

It's more intimate than Fenris wants to get into, Sebastian realizes, as Fenris' fingers finish the arc of their path over his thigh and instead curl distractingly around his length in a way that makes his mind sink down - or possibly flay away entirely. He hears a welcoming sound come from his own throat, and he realizes two things at once.

First, without any jealousy, that Fenris and Hawke are just this intimate - or that they had been and perhaps something had gone wrong that Fenris regretted.

Second, it was the first time that he'd let Fenris - or anyone at all - touch him in years. Before he'd joined the chantry, he'd been to the point of apathy about it, able to concentrate past the message of nerve endings and flesh. Now, however, the sensation was new again. Fenris' touch was roughened from combat, and before that, servitude. He was un-gentle and inexpert, and all of that sank down into Sebastian, welcomed for the rareness of genuine, unaffected naivete.

If before he had been bored by falsity and skill, hew as now electrified by something as simple as honest inexperience.

The emotion went straight down his spine in a blistering line, and he felt urgency come up in him suddenly and sharply in a way it hadn't since he'd numbered his years in the teens.

"Fenris," he warned - and the tone of his voice was enough to lend meaning to the single word. Had he been clearer in the moment, he'd have been faintly embarrassed by the rapidity of re-descent into need. Never had he even been tempted, having grown inured, and now hi tone was as ready and beggarly as he had been for the change his life had gone through when he'd first been sent to the Chantry.

"Let it," Fenris responds, and his eyes apologize for pushing, but his tone retains its command. "Let it happen."

The low growl in his tone reveals he is just as near.

No cold shock of terror at what's about to happen locks Sebastian down into shame. He might have made it even this far in denial of his shattered vows - the ones he'd begun to bend - sharply crease - for Fenris long ago. With no conscious effort, Sebastian is already at peace with this decision.

He can't decide if that terrifies him or not, before Fenris is stuttering over the edge and pulling Sebastian with him - not forgetting his grip and how to make use of it even as his rhythm breaks apart and he comes.

The strength of the release, the overwhelming and unused sensation curls Sebastian's fingers hard into their hand-holds, drags his voice harsh out of his throat and into the heated air between them, and he has no mind to regulate it into anything even half-dignified.

In the moments after, he sinks down into the mess and lets his mind go free. The urgency of his desperate situation has gone out of him. He feels at last an utter disconnect from them - suddenly and confusingly cast free of the only moorings he had ever welcomed. Like the eyes of the Maker had ceased to focus on him.

Distressingly - horrifyingly - he realized that it at last felt like he could breathe.

Like the weight he had been uknowingly haltered to - straining like a cart horse at a load it was never relieved of - was suddenly cut free. It left him weightless, but the real terror that came with that knowledge almost sent him scrambling. As if he could pick the lines back up again, and rebuild his Chantry brick by brick with his hands.

His laxity had turn tense in the sudden wake of fear, but Fenris' hands came up to press - damp, sticky with his own release - palms against his back, and Sebastian suddenly understood Fenris' reluctance to part with his own burdens.

"Everything is not over," Fenris assures him, eyes closed, because he understands - exactly - what it is to lose bonds. "You can survive in freedom, you know."

One green eye quirks open, measuring the response to his ultimate irony, and Sebastian's only possible answer comes with the release of the breath he's been holding.

"Only if another free man is willing to hear a confession now and again?" He hasn't lost all his lessons, will never abandon some things the Chantry taught him, but now he must move forward along a new path.

"Why not," Fenris yawns, and dust kicks up from the worn carpet beneath them. "I've learned what confessions give to both parties."

Sebastian is still considering his answer when Fenris looks straight up at him, meeting his gaze as he asks for something.

"Don't deny yourself any longer, when it's us?"

Clear on his exact meaning, Sebastian - as he always has - agrees with Fenris. Easily.


End file.
